I've been wanting to share this story for awhile now. I can look back at it now with amusement, but at the time I was so upset. Anyway, I had just gotten my brand new 2020 Veloster from the dealer just a little more than a year ago. I live about 125 miles from the dealer and was driving home on the freeway that evening. I was so totally pumped and excited. Anyway, I had driven about half way home when a big racoon strolled out onto to the freeway. There was no way to avoid it and I hit it going about 70mph just under the driver's side headlight. I was livid as you can imagine. I was lucky that an off ramp appeared just as I started to slow down, so thought it best to exit the highway, rather than sit on the shoulder. Terrible rubbing, grinding noise coming from the left front wheel well as I slowed to a stop. I got out to inspect the damage and found that the bumper cover was broken and pushed up near the bottom. The black honeycomb insert was barely hanging on and the internal wheel well liner was all crunched up and wedged in between the tire and the fender. I was able to pull the liner out and free it from the wheel well. I had to break it off so that I could fully detach it. I thoroughly inspected the suspension and steering components and there was no damage that I could see. I'm pretty sure the racoon got sucked up into the wheel well and got spit out, but I did not find and fur, body parts, blood etc. I drove it around in a gas station parking lot to make sure that it was safe to drive the rest of the way home. By this time I was totally deflated. I was experiencing the high of getting a brand new car that I was dreaming about for previous couple of years, and then I swung to a low of anger, frustration, disappointment, etc. Really?!?! WTF. Damn, damn, damn it!!! Anyway, I was able to get home and the next day was able to kinda patch things up a bit to make it look a bit better and was able to drive it. The insurance covered it, but there was bit of paperwork I had to do. You see, I didn't call the insurance company before I drove it off the lot to get it covered, but I knew that most insurance companies do automatically cover a new vehicle as long as you eventually call them and make it official which I did the next day. But this didn't come without confusion and hassle. If you can imagine how that phone conversation went - "Uhh...I need to put my brand new car on my insurance policy and oh...yeah...I hit a raccoon and need to file a claim." 
They had to do a phone interview with me where I had to swear to the events of that evening and so on and so forth. Talk about adding insult to injury. I couldn't get it into the body shop for a couple of weeks, so now I'm driving my new car around with an effed up front end. Well...I finally calmed down and got over it. It is what it is sort of thing. Then when I did get it into the shop, they thought they had all the parts, but they discovered that one or two weren't the correct parts and they had to reorder them. By this time my car was torn down, so I had to wait another couple weeks before it would finally be finished. This is some funny **** right? Not! Anyway, I can laugh about it now and it is an interesting and amusing story to tell now that I've healed and the pain is gone. Final cost for the repairs which the insurance did cover was about $3500 and this was covered on my comprehensive side of my policy. Interesting thing I learned with regards to insurance and comprehensive. They asked if the animal was alive and moving or was it dead already on the highway. Since it was alive and moving, they covered it. If it was dead and stationary, they wouldn't have covered it. It would have been deemed something that was avoidable on my part. I guess that does make sense. Actually, this whole affair didn't really make any sense to me, but now it is behind me, my car is good and I can see the humor in all of it now.
They had to do a phone interview with me where I had to swear to the events of that evening and so on and so forth. Talk about adding insult to injury. I couldn't get it into the body shop for a couple of weeks, so now I'm driving my new car around with an effed up front end. Well...I finally calmed down and got over it. It is what it is sort of thing. Then when I did get it into the shop, they thought they had all the parts, but they discovered that one or two weren't the correct parts and they had to reorder them. By this time my car was torn down, so I had to wait another couple weeks before it would finally be finished. This is some funny **** right? Not! Anyway, I can laugh about it now and it is an interesting and amusing story to tell now that I've healed and the pain is gone. Final cost for the repairs which the insurance did cover was about $3500 and this was covered on my comprehensive side of my policy. Interesting thing I learned with regards to insurance and comprehensive. They asked if the animal was alive and moving or was it dead already on the highway. Since it was alive and moving, they covered it. If it was dead and stationary, they wouldn't have covered it. It would have been deemed something that was avoidable on my part. I guess that does make sense. Actually, this whole affair didn't really make any sense to me, but now it is behind me, my car is good and I can see the humor in all of it now. 
